


The Peace of Edmund Reid

by TheGoodDoctor



Category: Ripper Street
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen, Ignores s4 as was written before that, Some angst, many spoilers for that episode, post the peace of edmund reid, seriously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-12
Updated: 2015-05-12
Packaged: 2018-03-30 06:58:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3927202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGoodDoctor/pseuds/TheGoodDoctor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A visit from old friends makes Edmund think.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Peace of Edmund Reid

**Author's Note:**

> Again, if you have not watched The Peace of Edmund Reid, which is s3e8(?), DO NOT READ THIS FIC.

Reid stands on the platform, still as always, the only clue to his real feelings in the tap of his fingers against his arm where it crosses his stomach. He cannot stop the fidgety movement but he doesn't suppose Mathilda will notice, practically bouncing with excitement at his side. Her small hand is looped into the crook of his elbow, as it often is, and he thinks it may be all that holds her down.

Edmund leans back to squint above her at the sky, clear of all clouds and shining down on the rural station. To all intents and purposes, it is a glorious day. Edmund feels almost sick with nerves.

The train comes barrelling into view, belching and screaming, and he takes a fortifying breath as Mathilda grins joyfully and searches on her tiptoes for their guests. He takes a moment to be thankful that he does not often smile and will not be expected to dredge one up.

It has been years. They have all changed. Surely, if they come now it is because they have forgotten how miserable he was, how damaging to himself and others, and then – then they will remember.

* * *

Bennet is first off the train, dropping to the platform with large cases which he drops to assist Susan and the little Matthew (an inside joke, Bennet gathers) from the train. He takes extra care to transport his darling, heavily-pregnant Rose with a kiss and Jackson passes tiny Edmund to his father before stepping off with his cases.

Susan has been looking around, grip tight on the ever-curious Matthew's hand, but they are found first.

“Miss Susan!” Mathilda calls, running the length of the platform on long legs. “Uncle Ben!”

“Darling,” Susan beams, the endearment slipping easily from her tongue as they embrace.

“Hello, little Matthew. Uncle Ben!” She exclaims again, bounding forward to carefully embrace him around the tiny bundle in his arms.

“Good lord, girl, you've grown.” He grins.

“No wonder your daddy keeps you in the country – every boy in the city would leave a thousand roses at your door,” Jackson grins with a tip of his hat.

“Uncle!” Mathilda blushes.

“It's true, you'd be beating them away.”

“Miss Rose, you cannot be serious.” The girl beams prettily, although truth be told she is a girl no longer. She still seems younger than she is, but her time with Reid has helped. “Daddy, they tease.”

The Inspector himself has made his slower progression the length of the platform, but has been standing out of the group for at least a minute without making himself known. “How can they. Perhaps, if you ask nicely, Inspector Drake will arrest them all for it,” he says, drily, and smiles fondly at her when she giggles. The smile slips from his face as he looks back at the group and nods to them all. “Inspector, Captain, Mrs Drake, Mrs Jackson.”

The ladies smile and the gentlemen nod, but there is an awkwardness that was never present when Reid worked in Whitechapel still. It is broken by Matthew, unable to stand being left out for so long, who tugs on Reid's trouser leg.

“Uncle, shall we go to the sea today?”

Reid crouches to the boy's level; though tall for his age, the boy has only three years. “If you wish it, then we shall. It is your holiday, so you may paddle.” Reid speaks seriously but softly, and the boy seems to appreciate the adult tone.

“Edmund cannot, for he is too young,” the boy pronounces. “Mother and Father don't want to.”

“You and I, then.”

Matthew appears to accept this answer and Reid stands. It is almost odd to see him without his cane and spectacles, considering the condition in which he left Whitechapel.

“Shall we?” he inquires, and there it is again; forced friendship. Reid is going through the motions, woodenly following the script, but with no real feeling. He seems uncertain – like a turtle, he has retreated into his shell and is wary of stretching out his head lest it be cut off. It makes Bennet frown, though he clears it to smile at his wife and listen to Mathilda's excited babble. 

* * *

True to his word, Reid takes them to the shore once they have left their luggage at his home. He produces a large blanket from a basket and spreads it on the sand. Rose lowers herself carefully as Mathilda and Matthew fall to it in their eagerness to rip off their shoes and socks and dip their feet in the waves. Bennet watches as Reid drops his hat, also removing his footwear with a speed similar to the children's and runs after them into the surf. His gait is a little awkward, but Bennet may just have been watching for it, expecting its presence. He had run with the Inspector for too many years not to miss the slight lean.

“Yeah, I see it too,” Jackson says, and Bennet realises that the American has been watching him watching Reid. They've worked together in the years following Reid's departure, an awkward first month filled with silences usually filled by the third member of their party. Eventually it was broken by Jackson turning to an empty patch of air, huffing and muttering “Jesus, Reid, it's your line.” It startled a laugh from Bennet and their work was easier with their new, stronger friendship.

“He's alright though,” Rose says, and Bennet feels his customary rush of affection for the perceptive lady holding his children. “A bit withdrawn, but better, I think.”

Jackson collapses on his back in the sand, a lazy grin on his face. “Anyone would be, livin' here.”

Susan looks down affectionately at the sprawling man and sits, more decorously, at his side. Rose appears to make a decision. “Bennet, hold your son.” He takes the baby, who gurgles happily at him, and she removes her smart boots and stockings. “I dare say I shall paddle.”

* * *

“Mr Reid.”

“Mrs Drake. You come to join us?”

“I do.” They watch the children run in the surf as the breakers wash over their toes. Edmund watches them like a hawk for a danger to appear. “When Bennet retires, we shall move just down the road. To that house, there.” She points at a cottage near the shore. “Every day I shall send my children to their uncle, and you shall have to take them in the sea for it is far too cold!” she suddenly squeaks, and dances a little to get her feet out of the cold water and Edmund laughs, ducking his head.

“If you wish.” He smiles a tiny smile towards the horizon, small and sad, like he thinks she will later change her mind.

“I mean it.” She places a hand on his arm, looking earnestly at his face, so lined with stress and pain.

“Your husband may not agree,” he mutters, staring at his feet, but before she can understand him he suggests they return that she might rest. He calls the children back to him, Mathilda racing across the sand to wrap her damp arms around him, laughing. Mathilda takes one arm and Matthew the other hand and Edmund listens intently as they tell him of their adventures.

The basket also contains a large picnic lunch, which Reid tells them proudly was prepared by Mathilda. Rose thinks him happier around children; as they eat they discuss various misadventures and cases the men have run around on since they last wrote and Jackson's disgust at the tanneries makes Edmund smile a little but it is holding his namesake that makes him beam. Little Edmund smiles with more freedom than his godfather although Reid's expression of wonder rather makes up for it. He murmurs to the child to the child softly, gently holding a hand and moving it slightly while telling stories in his deep tones. The child stares back at him, dark wide eyes locked on the pale ones above him.

When the food is gone, Jackson settles his head in his wife's lap and shuts his eyes. Susan's fingers card gently through his hair, holding her slumbering son's head against her shoulder. Rose leans against her husband, whose hand settles easily on her stomach and she holds it. He presses a kiss lightly into the crown of her head and she smiles up at him.

Mathilda curls into her father's side and strokes Edmund's head where he lies in Reid's arms. Reid kisses Mathilda's curls lightly and says quietly “I used to hold you like this. When you were so very small. I could fit your whole head in the palm of my hand.”

“Really?” she whispers.

He hums. “You had a cold once, and kept your mother up all night coughing and crying. I stayed up till the sun rose holding you while your mama slept.”

“Weren't you tired?”

“I minded not.” He smiles. “Abberline minded for me, when I slept on his desk.”

Bennet smiles to himself, easily imagining a younger Reid blinking back sleep through the Chief Inspector's wroth.

The sun passes behind a thick cloud, suddenly making all darker and colder than before. They cast their eyes to the skies, and Reid places his hat on his head. “Perhaps we should return.”

Jackson is prodded back to life and he and Bennet pack away the basket. They work faster when it begins to rain, thick drops spattering against the sand, and then race towards the house after Susan, cradling Matthew to her chest as she strides briskly over the sand, Rose and Mathilda who, arm-in-arm, are nearly running, and Reid, who is folded over the child in his arms with his coat pulled around them both.

* * *

Their coats drip, rhythmically, onto the hallway floor, puddles forming under the laden hatstand. They sit around the fire in his sitting room, watching the flickering light or the drumming of watery soldiers, fighting the glass to invade their dry, warm sanctuary.

Mathilda is reading, Jackson and Susan playing cards, Rose sleeping near her beloved Bennet. The children sleep in their beds.

Edmund cannot stay in the silence.

He stands on the pretext of making some bedding arrangement, and if Mathilda has questions about what needs doing, having prepared everything in advance, she keeps them to herself.

Edmund goes out into the hall and debates where to remain until his excuse surely runs out. To his right, the kitchen, to his left the room in which the Jacksons will stay. Too close.

He turns right towards the front door, but leaving the house would contradict himself. Instead, he walks up the stairs. In front of him, a bathroom. To his left, three doors: his, Mathilda's, the Drakes'. Edmund feels as if he should go to the guest room for his excuse but cannot stand the reminder that his old friends are below and he no longer fits in. They should not want him with them.

There is a whining, suddenly, sharp and piercing, in his right ear and he winces and ducks that side of his head. His hand reaches out for the banister, flailing and hoping with his eyes tight shut against the pain in his head. Edmund thinks he hears a voice, distant and watery under the whine, but it matters not as his hand has caught on something, something cotton, warm and firm. It disappears momentarily, but before he can miss it, his support is replaced by a calloused hand under his and another on his back. They lower him slowly to the floor and he leans against the wall, face screwed up in pain. There is definitely a voice now.

“Mr Reid? Mr Reid, sir, can you hear me?”

“Bennet,” he whispers, cracking open an eye. His vision swims, then settles into the concerned face of his oldest friend.

He looks relieved. “Are you all right, sir?”

“Not sir any more, Inspector,” Edmund emphasises the title. “It will pass.”

“Anything I can do?”

“It will pass.” It feels less even now and he opens his other eye. “Your concern is unnecessary.”

Bennet huffs and sits beside him regardless. The window opposite them shines grim, grey light in a rectangle onto their faces, smeared and blurred by the sudden rain. “Mr Reid-”

“I have a first name, Bennet. You may know it,” Edmund looks at him out of the corner of his eye. “It's similar to that of your son, I believe.”

Bennet ducks his head, huffing a laugh, and they go back to staring out of the window.

“Edmund.”

“Bennet.”

A pause. Then both speak at once: “You are not yourself, Edmund.”

“If you want to leave it is your right, I shall not -”

Reid breaks off awkwardly and whatever else each might have said is lost to the rain's drumming. Edmund purses his lips then compresses them, staring down between his drawn-up knees to avoid Bennet's stunned gaze

The rain thunders against the house. He gestures with his hand, a tiny wave. “I thought-” He breathes heavily. “I thought you might not wish to stay.”

“Would you wish us not to stay?” Bennet frowns.

Edmund's head swings up to stare at him. “No,” he says, quickly, and his head drops back.

“Then why would not we want to be here?”

Reid shakes his head, stands. “Do not think on it.” He gestures vaguely at the stairs. “I believe dinner may be-” He frowns. “Think not on it.”

“Mr Reid-” Bennet is cut off by the close of Edmund's door.

* * *

All look up on his return. “How is he?” Jackson asks.

Bennet raises his eyebrows briefly and frowns. “I know not. He had a headache, near fell down the stairs on me.”

Mathilda puts down her book with a pretty frown and they hear her footsteps trot up the stairs. A door opens and closes.

“Truth be told,” Bennet says, sitting as the Jacksons lay down their cards, “I think him nervous.”

“What of?” the American asks, gesturing expansively with his cigarette. The smoke coils around him like snakes. “This is his own damn home.”

“I know,” Bennet says. “I think him nervous of us.”

Jackson starts to protest, but his wife cuts him off. “We are all changed. He is changed. We only see him for christenings and each other near constantly.”

“But he has nought to be afraid of,” Rose protests.

“We know that, darlin', but he himself does not,” Jackson sighs. “An' I don' know how to tell him.”

* * *

“What is it worries you, daddy?”

Edmund looks down at his daughter, half lying on him as they sprawl across his bed. He considers denial, but he has no desire to begin lying to his daughter. “I am changed, Mathilda. Before you were returned to me,” he squeezes her tight and presses a kiss into her hair, “I was not as I am now. You make me better, dear girl, but our guests knew me when I was not better.” Mathilda appears confused, so he tries again. “When I worked in Whitechapel, without you, I could be – difficult. I made it hard for others to like me lest I lose them as I lost you. I fear – I fear they knew me when I was not so kind. I fear they will remember me this way, and wish to be away from me.” He scrubs the heel of his hand into his eye, where he can feel an uncomfortable prickling.

Mathilda hugs him tighter. “But if they were your friends when you were difficult, will they not like you even better now?”

Edmund sighs. “Perhaps, dear one. Perhaps.”

* * *

The next morning, Jackson awakes early and hungry and, yawning widely, makes his way into the kitchen. Reid is there, gazing out to sea through wire spectacles and leaning on his black cane.

“You find yourself in need of support once more, Inspector?” Jackson says, acquiring the remainder of last night's brandy.

“You find yourself in need of liquor once more, Captain?” Reid snaps sharply.

Jackson holds up his hands in surrender, placing the brandy back on the table. “I thought we did this years ago,” he says, nearly aggressive.

Reid's perfect posture collapses, hunching over the work-surface with one hand flat on it for support. He huffs, turning to lean against it and face Jackson. Edmund grimaces his apology, lifting the cane as example. “I slip into old habits.”

Jackson takes this as enough to regain the brandy and toast with it. “Eh, it weren't all bad. You knew us.” Reid raises his eyebrows silently and Jackson laughs. “Yeah, yeah, you grumpy bastard.”

Reid gives a short half-smile and bows his head in acquiescence.

Jackson leans his hip against the table, folding his arms around his drink. “It's good to see you again, Reid.” The other man looks up at him, a tiny frown defining the lines between his eyes. “Even if you are a grumpy bastard.”

* * *

“How fares your wounds?”

Edmund looks up, startled, at Susan. She watches him with decided scrutiny.

“They do not- they rarely trouble me,” he says, avoiding the lie that springs to his tongue.

“Rarely?”

He shrugs. “Sometimes I need the cane a little. Migraines, upon occasion. Not often.” She nods, as if satisfied with his abilities to recover. “One would hardly know you shot me,” he says amicably, looking back down at his newspaper, but grinning to himself when Susan swats his arm, her lips twisted against laughter as she walks away. It bubbles from her as she leaves the room and fills the house with his quiet chuckles echoing it.

* * *

“You caught him?” Edmund leans forward. “Proven, indubitably, with his fingerprints?”

“Yes, Edmund,” Bennet grins. “Just as you said it would one day be.”

Edmund beams. “Modern policing. At last.”

“Sergeant Grace finds it all very exciting.”

Edmund stares out the window, shaking his head and smiling. “It is, Bennet, it is _wonderful_.”

* * *

Rose rolls her eyes and slumps beside Edmund, sighing hugely.

“Are you unwell?” He frowns at her. “Can I get you anything? I may have something that will help-”

“A sedative?” She smiles tiredly. “Someone persists in making merry inside, and while I am sure the dancing is wonderful the effect is a little tiresome.” Edmund nods, frowning anyway. Rose makes an impulse move and presses Reid's hand against the source of the kicking.

The effect is instant – the frown changes to wonderment and he leans slightly in, fingers splayed to feel all he can. “Oh,” he whispers, and Rose smiles softly. A particularly hard kick thumps against his palm and though he winces with her, he soon returns to joy.

He leans towards her stomach, sending a tiny smile at her confused expression. “Hello, little one,” he says softly. “Stop kicking your mother.”

Rose laughs at the strangeness. “Edmund, be serious.”

“I am serious,” he says. “Do not kick your mother, it isn't polite.” Rose leans back and shuts her eyes, smiling. “You have tired her out, little one. You must let her be,” Edmund tells the bump seriously. “One day, little one, we will meet properly. I shall take you to the beach. If you do not kick, there shall be strawberry ices.”

Rose laughs. “Listen to your Uncle Edmund, he keeps his promises.”

* * *

“Uncle?”

Edmund looks down at Matthew where he walks along the beach beside him. “Yes?”

“Why do you not live near us like Uncle Bennet and Aunt Rose?”

“I did, once.”

“Really?”

“Hmm, yes. But I like the sea too much. Here, I can fish and paddle, and Mathilda can walk on the shore.”

Matthew considers this. “I want to live near you.”

“Why is that?”

“I like the sea too. And I like you and Mathilda and we don't see you often, though father reads me your letters.” The boy looks up at him shyly. When Reid doesn't respond, he continues. “I like it when you talk about Mathilda, because you sound all excited and proud. And father is happy when you ask about cases and says that you haven't changed. If we lived with you, you could ask all the time.”

“Yes,” Reid says softly. “I could.” 

* * *

The house is quiet, and Edmund thinks all abed and sleeping. He makes his slow progress down the stairs to the kitchen, slow enough to hear the soft murmuring before he disturbs it.

A gas lamp is on, turned down low, the yellow light spilling out into the hall. The voices are of Jackson and Matthew float out to where Edmund stands, frozen, on the steps.

“Tell me a story, father, and then I'll be able to sleep.”

“Uh-huh? What kinda story?”

The boy sounds excited. “A real one. An Uncles one.”

Jackson chuckles. “Yeah, all right. Now, once there was a captain whose name was Father. He had two friends called Inspector Uncle Edmund and Inspector Uncle Bennet. Their job-”

“-was to catch bad people an' put them in jail. I know this bit!”

“Yeah, thanks kid. So, one day there's a report come in that a shop's been broken into, window smashed but nothing taken.” Edmund sits on the stairs, ear turned to the light. “Uncle Edmund, Uncle Bennet and Father went to the shop and could see no reason for anyone to break the window. They'd been inside, but nothing was gone.”

“Except what?” Matthew says expectantly.

“What do you mean? Nothing was gone.”

“There's always an except,” the boy says, like it's hugely obvious.

“Except;” Jackson says dramatically, “Uncle Edmund noticed something odd.”

Edmund remembers this case. He relives it in his mind as the boy gasps and giggles at the shocks and cleverness of his relations; he'd been in a foul temper with all, snapping and snarling. Jedidiah Shine may have been forcefully retired, but justice was never served. It still grated, the one loose end he could never tie up neatly, the one snag in a woven cloth. Jackson portrays him as the honourable, clever Inspector who believes no-one above the law, not even the upper-class jeweller they hang at the end of the tale, when not weeks before he had been screaming for his man to kill another in a way that will see neither at the end of a rope, baying for a fellow man's blood.

Matthew doesn't see his uncle, hunched in on himself at the foot of the stairs and for that he is grateful, but he supposes it was too much to hope that the American would miss him also.

Jackson says nothing, simply leads his boy to bed and returns with whiskey. He plants himself by Reid, points the neck of the bottle at him.

“I wasn't like that.” Edmund gestures towards the warm yellow light. “I wasn't – good.”

Jackson sighs, taking a swig of the whiskey and wincing at the burn. “Hell, Reid, none of us were. We ain't fairy-tale heroes. But the kid wants to know about his family.”

“I am not his family,” he whispers.

Jackson looks at him, eyebrow raised incredulously. “You wanna tell him, Uncle Edmund, or shall I?”

“He only – you told him to call me that.”

“Yes, Reid, I did. And you're Uncle to the Drake ankle-biters too. One of them's named after you, goddamnit. An' we chose those names. An' 'cause you're thickheaded, I'm gonna have to tell you why.” Jackson leans in, intent gaze fixed on Edmund's panicked one. “Because you're important to us. Because you're family. Because we want you to be their uncle, because to us you are a brother.” Edmund blinks a few times, ducking his head away. It's meant to be subtle, but it's midnight and he's tired. His hand comes up to scrub his eyes against the prickling and he breathes shakily. “Jesus, brother,” Homer says softly, wrapping an arm around the bigger man's shoulders and pulling him into a hug. He ignores the shaking shoulders, the hitched breathing, the damp. Heaven knows Edmund Reid is a private man, not at all tactile, and Homer pushes down the suspicions that Reid hasn't had a proper hug since he lost his daughter.

They sit together in the moonlit gloom, and though Reid pushes back, wipes his red eyes and leaves silently, Jackson knows he needed it.

* * *

The next morning, Edmund doesn't need his cane, or his glasses. He is the last one down and though he stands in the doorway and watches everyone before entering fully, Susan gets the impression it is because he is trying to remember every detail and preserve it. She nudges her son and nods to the door. The boy's eyes light up and he pats the seat beside him in silent invitation. He pushes himself off the wall and goes to it. As he circles to his seat he kisses his daughter's hair, pats Jackson on the shoulder and sits, smiling a rare smile at all his guests.

As Matthew tells him of his plans for his day with his family, Edmund is happy. Here, at last, is the peace of Edmund Reid.


End file.
